Andy Plant, the designer and builder of the Newport Civic Clock, is a true successor to Roland Emmet. His workshop and studio, Jumble Hole Works near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, is where the clock was built (bottom).
The place is as picturesque as its name, if not more so.
A near-derelict mill, hidden away by a stream on a wooded hillside, it would
serve as a setting for "Last of the Summer Wine". Andy's main work is in
designing and making theatrical props, but his "mechanical sculptures"
include other
civic
clocks in Chelsea, Covent Garden and
Accrington. They are all of the same ilk -
entertaining, artistic and stunningly ingenious. The
Newport clock's design came to him in a sudden
flash of inspiration, in virtually its final form. He has a model of
an alternative design he offered to Newport Council - a giant rotating fish
that would, inter alia, spray water and play music from a foghorn in
its belly. Genius always has cropped up in strange places!
As a prototype for a Meccano model, Newport's allegorical
clock (designed and built in 1991) satisfied all requirements. A
classical arch, 30 feet high, it is no twee thing, but for 57
minutes of the hour it seems harmless enough. But when the hour strikes, the
other 3 minutes can seen an eternity. It is designed to startle the
passer-by and remind him of the inexorable passing of time and his own
mortality, and it does! After thunder, lightning, smoke and sudden
apparitions of a devil and grinning skeletons, it carries on where the
Guinness Clock left off when the huge arch splits apart, high above the
onlooker's head, with its 6-ton weight coming to rest balanced at crazy angles.
The spectacle is vertiginous and comical in a weird sort of way. Inside, life-size (ie human-size) angels are revealed, two manning a giant cuckoo clock and another riding on the pendulum, wings flapping. When the two clock weights have dropped fully, the pendulum stops and it all falls still. Then a cuckoo pops out and wakes the angels, who wind up the weights and the arch comes together again and snaps shut as if it was all a bad dream. It would persuade any unsuspecting onlooker to drink less Guinness!
To see an animation of the Newport Civic Clock and other mechanical sculptures by Andy Plant, see: http://www.andyplant.co.uk/newport/